Malisa
Feminine · “a bee”
Malisa carries one s where Melissa carries two, and that single letter does more than it looks. It changes the shape of the middle of the word, and it opens a second reading: not Melissa at all, but the older Germanic name that English writes as Millicent and French wrote as Melisende.
How old is the name Malisa?
Malisa first appears in US birth records in 1885 — 140 years ago. The typical Malisa alive today was born around 1977, making them about 48 years old. About 2,200 people named Malisa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Malisa most popular?
Malisa peaked in 1885, reaching #921 nationally. See the whole 1885 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Melisende to Malisa
The story of Malisa
The Germanic half of that pair belonged to a remarkable woman. Melisende was crowned in Jerusalem in 1131, jointly with her husband and their infant son, and when her husband tried to govern without her the barons of the kingdom sided with her. She ruled in her own right for the rest of his life and as regent after it, endowed churches, commissioned a psalter that still survives, and had to be argued out of power by her own grown son rather than removed from it. Her name is the French shape of a compound meaning something like strong at labor, which is about as accurate a description of a working monarch as an inherited name is ever likely to manage. Nothing connects her to the Greek bee, and yet in English the two lines meet in spellings like this one.
Meaningscholars disagree
a bee, or strong in work, depending on which name it descends from
Two unrelated names converge on this spelling. Melissa is the Greek word for a honeybee. Millicent, in its French form Melisende, is Germanic, built from elements meaning labor and strength. Malisa can be reached from either, and the record does not say which one a given family had in mind.
How the name formed
- Melisende
- Millicent
- Melissa
- Malisa
Related forms: Mélisande · Melissa · Melisa · Melisande
Pronouncing Malisa
muh-LEE-suh
Three syllables with the stress in the middle. The single s changes nothing audible, though a few families front the stress and say MAL-iss-uh instead.
Nicknames for Malisa
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1885
- Most girls named
- 1973104 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #921reached in 1885
- Change vs 2016
- 0.0%6 in 2021, from 6
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Malisa in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mélisande in French — related form
- Melissa in Italian — same name
- Melisa in Spanish — spelling variant
- Melisande in German — related form
Malisas among us
people named Malisa are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Malisa sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- Every sound is easy and the spelling follows the sound closely.
- It reaches back to two separate traditions rather than one.
- Lisa sits inside it as a short form that needs no explaining.
- Melissa is the standard spelling and this one will be corrected to it constantly.
- There is no way to tell a stranger which of the two source names is meant.
- The single s makes the name look like a typing slip rather than a choice.
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Malisa
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Malisas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,200 people named Malisa are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Malisa in 2025?
- Malisa is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Malisa with classmates?
- Malisa will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More M names
The most-given names starting with M, all years combined.
Mary#125 · Margaret#112 · Michelle#465 · Melissa#419 · Maria#87 · Martha#712 · Marie#617 · Mildred#1962
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Malisa? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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